Bon Jovi - Final Night of The Circle Tour

While sitting, talking about Christmas plans of visiting Australia, now that we lived in Hong Kong, I happened to be looking at the Bon Jovi website for their tour. Looking down to December, I saw they were playing in Sydney then. With constant talk about Bon Jovi for the next few days I was able to persuade the family to purchase tickets for the 19th. We got good seats, only a few rows above the floor, much better than my first Bon Jovi experience.
Once in Aus, and waiting for a taxi out front of the hotel in the bad weather for half an hour, I was worried we would be late. Finally when a taxi appeared the people in front were getting in, they turned around and asked if we were heading to the Sydney Football Stadium as well, we figured they knew this due to my wearing of a Bon Jovi tshirt from the Toronto concert. The couple also heading to the concert, had seen them on the first of their three dates in Sydney as well and were from Singapore. The man had been a fan of the band since 1984, and had gone to many concerts in Japan, Aus and the UK. I thought this was quite amazing, as I had never heard of/met a fan from the very beginning of the band, before Slippery When Wet.
The concert was outdoors and the weather was iffy, therefore everyone was purchasing ponchos pre-concert. We missed the opening act, October Rage but were in time for the headlining act. Bon Jovi came out and put on an amazing show. They pulled out all of the stops, being that it was their last night of the tour for their newest album (though they did recently release their Greatest Hits and were going to continue touring on their World Tour in 2011.) They had a great setlist that had songs from all Bon Jovi "Eras" (though there was absence of songs from their first two albums.) When Jon Bon Jovi went out onto a platform in the crowd to perform Hallelujah, the heavens let loose, and rain poured down. It was actually, really stunning, with him crooning the Leonard Cohen song out in the middle of pouring rain. That concert will always be one of my favourites!
Bon Jovi is an amazing live band and their vocals on many songs are even better live than on the albums! They are one of the few bands that I would actually buy a live CD before a studio album.

Bon Jovi performing Hallelujah at the concert